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The College of Saint Rose Press Release

JAZZ ICON LEE SHAW IN CONCERT AT SAINT ROSEShaw Trio to Celebrate Launch of New CD-DVD “Live In Graz”

Capital Region jazz legend Lee Shaw will celebrate the release of Live In Graz, her trio’s new CD-DVD, with a concert at The College of Saint Rose.

The Lee Shaw Trio – Lee Shaw on piano, bassist Rich Syracuse and drummer Jeff Siegel – will perform Wednesday, October 15, at 7:30 p.m. in the Picotte Recital Hall, Massry Center for the Arts, 1002 Madison Ave., Albany. The concert, the trio’s first at Saint Rose, will include selections from the new CD-DVD and other favorites. Admission is free and open to the public.

When the trio performed in Graz, Austria, in November 2007, the Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF) recorded the entire evening. A later concert in Reutlingen, Germany, was captured on video. The result is Live In Graz, which includes selections from the Graz concert and footage and images from the performance in Reutlingen.

When she began playing piano in nightclubs in Chicago, Shaw was sharing bills with the likes of Anita O’Day, Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. It was the 1950s, and fresh out of the American Conservatory of Music, where she earned her master’s degree, she drew mostly on her classical background, her encyclopedic knowledge of popular songs and her uncanny ability to play in any key. Now 82 years old, she feels that discovering her passion at age 5 and being able to learn and develop over these many years in an uninterrupted way has made her one of the most fortunate of people.

Shaw, who has lived in the Albany region for the last three decades, has had her own trio for more than 40 years, during which time she has performed in clubs, concerts and festivals throughout the United States, Canada and Europe. She has been a guest on Marian McPartland’s NPR program “Piano Jazz” and can be heard frequently on WAMC’s “The Roundtable.” Shaw was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame in 1993 and awarded an honorary doctorate from Saint Rose in 2002.

The trio travels to Oklahoma in November for a performance at East Central University in Ada, Shaw's home town. The trio also will play at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma (USAO) in Chickasha. Established in 1908 as the Oklahoma College for Women, from which Shaw graduated as a piano major and is an inductee in her alma mater’s Alumni Hall of Fame, USAO is honoring Shaw, along with 10 other women from the institution’s 100-year history, as an international leader in music.The October 15 concert is one of a series of Premiere Performances celebrating the opening of the Massry Center for the Arts, the College’s new home for music and art.

THE LOCAL HERO AWARD (Venue Division)… to MASSRY CENTER FOR THE ARTS – Put simply, College of Saint Rose “gets it!” While some venues focused on acts with more “potential drawing power”, CSR staged a stream of powerful – and sold-out – jazz shows throughout the year, including a tremendous homecoming by Stefon Harris, a great CD-release party for Brian Patneaude’s disc Riverview… and another show we’ll talk about later. Click here to read more on J Hunters Top Five Concerts 2009...